From the moment she was born, Le Thi Tham was not as fortunate as other children, having been born with a congenital defect, without arms, right from the womb.
Looking at her firstborn daughter, still red and newborn, with the defect on her body, the young mother fainted. But, with the love of her family, Le Thi Tham has triumphed over fate, painting her dreams with her own feet.
As a result of Agent Orange passed down from a previous generation, Le Thi Tham, from team 9, Doan Ket hamlet, Dong Thinh Commune, Dong Son District, Thanh Hoa Province, has had no arms since birth. To adapt to her body’s impairments, the little girl learned to live independently from a young age.
Watching her armless child carefully forming each small letter with her miraculous feet, Ms. Nguyen Thi Tinh, Tham’s mother, could not hold back the tears rolling down her cheeks. She said, choking back tears: “My family has two children; Tham is my eldest daughter, and my son is in grade 4. Before, when I gave birth to Tham, our family was poor and had no money for an ultrasound; I only went for check-ups at the commune health station, so her impairments were not detected, and because she had feet, her heartbeat could still be heard. After giving birth, holding my child in my arms, I could not believe my eyes; an uncertain future lay before my tiny child”.
Many tears have flowed — Tham’s tears, her family’s tears, and the tears of others who pitied her. Refusing to accept the pain, Tham has risen above her fate with her miraculous feet. At the age of four, seeing her friends going to kindergarten and writing on clean white pages, Tham was delighted. But the trouble was, with no arms, how could she hold a pen? Seeing her daughter’s love of writing, her mother helped her grip a pen under her arm to practise writing, but it kept slipping out. Undaunted, Tham placed the pen between her feet and practised writing.
At first, holding the pen and controlling it as she wished was extremely difficult, but with practice it became familiar, Tham recalled: “At first, my handwriting was scribbled because my feet were not like hands; they were very stiff, and the pen slipping out was terribly painful. Many times my feet were scratched and blood soaked the white pages, and my mother hurriedly wiped it away”. For Tham, the hardest part was controlling her toes. She is used to writing with her left foot because her left foot is longer than her right. In the end, heaven rewarded her efforts: after nearly a year of diligent practice, Tham could write fluently.
From the moment she became aware of living with the impairment of her hands, Tham felt as though her life had closed behind a dark velvet curtain. But, thanks to her family’s love and her mother’s devoted care, she found the determination to rise in life. Tham said that ever since she started grade 1 she had felt very self-conscious and sad because her friends teased her. But her mother was always there to help her with everything.
For the past 10 years, the image of a mother taking her child to school has left its mark on the roads of Dong Thinh Commune. Tham’s mother has put aside earning a living, taking Tham to and from school every day, looking after the family and farming two sao of rice fields. The economic burden falls entirely on the thin shoulders of her husband, who works as a construction labourer. Ms. Tinh said: “In the first few years of taking Tham to school, it was hard, because during breaks and at the end of school, Tham was pushed around by her friends and burst into tears. Every time she fell, her face was scratched because she had no arms to break her fall. The family always had to pick her up 30 minutes early at the end of school. By grade 3, the children were more aware and stopped pushing her over. In high school, her friends loved her and helped her with her studies, but Tham felt even more self-conscious about herself”.
Looking at Tham’s small frame, no one would think she has finished grade 10. At 16, Tham weighs only 26kg, has a curved spine and suffers from many illnesses, so her health is very poor. The school is about 3km from home, and as she looks after her daughter every day and listens to what is in her heart, Ms. Tinh feels a tightening pain: “Recently Tham said to me, ‘Mum, you keep taking me to school like this; maybe I should quit school so you have less hardship and can go to work to support my younger sibling.’ At that moment, I held back my pain and encouraged her to study hard and succeed. ‘As long as heaven still gives me health, I will still be the arms that take you to school,’” Ms. Tinh confided.
This summer, Ms. Tinh has enrolled Tham in an English class in the city, with renewed hope that her daughter will gain English so that she can later realise her dream of becoming an IT engineer.
Vi Giang – http://phapluatxahoi.vn